Microsoft‘s top-ranking sales leader, Judson Althoff, has been promoted to a bigger role as CEO of the company’s commercial business.

Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, wrote in a memo on Wednesday that marketing and operations will move under Althoff’s organization. Most of Microsoft’s revenue comes from commercial offerings such as productivity software subscriptions and cloud-based Nvidia chips for running artificial intelligence models.

“Our success depends on enabling commercial and public sector customers and partners to combine their human capital with new AI capabilities to change the frontier of how they operate,” Nadella wrote in the email. “To accelerate this, we will increasingly need to bring together sales, marketing, operations, and engineering to drive growth and strengthen our position as the partner of choice for AI transformation.”

Althoff, who joined from Oracle as president of Microsoft’s North America business in 2013, was already among Microsoft’s highest-paid executives, receiving over $23 million in total pay in the 2024 fiscal year. His most recent title was executive vice president and chief commercial officer.

Under Nadella, who replaced Steve Ballmer as CEO in 2014, Microsoft has more frequently used the CEO title for select executives.

LinkedIn has had a CEO since Microsoft acquired the company in 2016. Last year Microsoft hired Mustafa Suleyman, a co-founder of the DeepMind AI lab now owned by Google, and made him CEO of a group called Microsoft AI that includes Bing. And GitHub, which Microsoft bought in 2018, had a CEO until last month, when Thomas Dohmke left the company.

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Microsoft said Wednesday that it will stop promoting a consumer subscription for artificial intelligence services and introduced a bundle blending AI features with traditional productivity apps.

The software company introduced Copilot Pro at $20 per month in early 2024. Microsoft 365 Family, which allows for up to six users and 6 terabytes of cloud storage, goes for $12.99 each month. The new Microsoft 365 Premium tier essentially combines both and will cost $19.99 a month.

“Other AI tools stop at chat — we deliver that plus so much more,” Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft’s consumer marketing leader, wrote in a statement provided to CNBC.

Microsoft is not discontinuing Copilot Pro, a spokesperson said.

Technology companies have been trying to capitalize on the broad interest in tapping generative AI models to compose documents and create videos.

Microsoft offers a free version of its Copilot assistant, in line with Anthropic, Google and OpenAI, all of which sell paid subscriptions for consumers.

Microsoft 365 Premium comes with higher usage limits than the free Copilot and productivity software subscriptions targeting consumers.

As was the case with Copilot Pro and with consumer Microsoft 365 subscriptions, the new offering enables conversations with Copilot in Microsoft’s Office apps such as Word, Excel and PowerPoint.

Microsoft is sweetening the new offer with forthcoming access to two AI reasoning agents that so far have only been available to corporate workers with Microsoft 365 Copilot subscriptions.

OpenAI relies on Microsoft’s Azure cloud to run its ChatGPT assistant and its underlying models, and Microsoft incorporates the models into its Copilot. Microsoft has invested more than $13 billion in OpenAI. The companies are partners that also compete.

Microsoft reported 89 million consumer subscribers for Microsoft 365 services in the June quarter, up 8%. Revenue growth from those products has accelerated for three quarters in a row, reaching 20% in the June quarter.

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Microsoft is raising the Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription price by 50% to $29.99 per month, effective immediately, the company announced Wednesday.

The $10 spike comes with a slew of changes to all its Game Pass plans, though its Essential and Premium plans will remain the same price at $9.99 and $14.99, respectively.

The Game Pass Core tier will no longer exist and instead will be rolled into the Essential tier, while Standard subscribers will move to the Premium tier.

“As we continue to evolve Xbox Game Pass, we’re focused on delivering more value, more benefits, and more great games across every plan,” the company said in a release. “Whether you play on console, PC, cloud – or all three – there’s a Game Pass option designed to fit your playstyle.”

The new Ultimate tier would cost $359.88 over the course of a year, with the Premium tier at $179.88 yearly and the Essential tier at $119.88 yearly.

Comparatively, PlayStation Plus Premium’s highest tier is set at $159.99 annually, with the Extra tier at $134.99 and the Essential tier at $79.99.

Game Pass Ultimate subscribers will now have access to over 400 games and more than 75 day-one releases each year, with over 45 new titles added on Wednesday.

Ubisoft+ Classics is joining the Ultimate tier to offer a selection of Ubisoft games, including “Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown,” “Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag” and more. Users will also see improved streaming quality up to 1440p and a new rewards program.

Premium subscribers will also get an expanded library of over 200 games, while the Essential tier will receive over 50 titles. Both will additionally gain unlimited cloud access, which was previously only available through the Ultimate plan.

Microsoft previously reported a record 34 million Game Pass subscribers in 2024 and a total revenue of almost $5 billion over the last fiscal year. Gaming accounted for 8% of the software giant’s total revenue in 2025, company data showed.

Growth in gaming has been bolstered in recent years by Microsoft’s landmark $75.4 billion acquisition of video game publisher Activision Blizzard in 2023, the largest deal in the company’s history.

However, Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Series S are still struggling to compete against Sony‘s PlayStation 5 and the Nintendo Switch 2.

The company reported decreasing console sales in FY 2025, with Xbox hardware revenue down 25% over the last year.

Several Xbox consoles will see price hikes in the U.S. starting in October for the second time this year. The Series X and Series S will increase to $699 and $399, respectively.